Michael's

NOSHING ON POWER, NIBBLING ON FAME Michaels on West 55th Street has attracted a well-photographed crowd since 1989.Credit
Evan Sung for The New York Times

UNTIL a recent dinner at Michael’s I thought California cuisine was about lightness and brightness, about not mucking up and weighing down the centerpiece ingredients of a dish.

Then I had this restaurant’s jumbo shrimp appetizer. The shrimp were entombed in a dense, soggy beer batter and interred in an almost monochromatic landscape of goat cheese, puddles of dark miso aioli and shavings of summer truffle that might have been shavings of summer rubber for all the flavor they had.

California cuisine? More like gloppy, affected pub grub, for which Michael’s charges $25. That’s what happens when a restaurant starts throwing truffles around, and that’s probably one reason this restaurant does it.

Until that dinner I thought Michael’s prided itself on produce. Then I had its appetizer of peekytoe crab with spears of white asparagus, which might as well have been spears of white wax for all the flavor they had.

Dinner, granted, isn’t really the point of Michael’s. For that matter food is no longer the point of Michael’s, which functions primarily as a power lunch and power breakfast spot, a Midtown nexus of influence and affluence and fodder for Page Six.

But Michael’s presents itself as a serious restaurant. It certainly charges like a serious restaurant, levying a tariff of $35 for a lunchtime burger that’s not Kobe and doesn’t ooze foie gras.

So it should perform at the level of a serious restaurant. These days, it usually doesn’t.

Across a series of visits I had some enjoyable food, notably the renowned Cobb salad, less a salad than an entire ecosystem, vast and verdant, with enough avocado to feed three I.C.M. agents or five Vogue editors.

But I also had many more duds and disappointments that violated the very spirit of a restaurant originally cast as an ambassador of certain West Coast culinary values when it opened in Midtown 19 years ago.

I had an overly vinegary tangle of sunflower sprouts, slightly dry cod, repellently chalky hamachi and a lobster dish that could have passed for a salt lick.

I had a brown sugar shortcake that tasted more like dough than cake, as if it hadn’t spent nearly enough time in the oven. And I had unsatisfying wine counsel, one sommelier responding to my request for a non-oaky Chardonnay by suggesting I switch to Sancerre and another guiding me to a Chardonnay that was oaky.

It’s not that the acclaimed chef Michael McCarty, who owns this restaurant, along with its southern California forbear, neglects it.

He was there when I went for breakfast. He was there when I went for lunch and there when I went for dinner, not in chef’s whites but in street clothes or business dress.

He roamed the dining rooms, which are pleasantly awash in natural light during the day, and pressed the flesh of the well-heeled regulars at the well-separated tables under all the eye-catching contemporary artwork.

And his jolly, gregarious demeanor set a tone for service that was upbeat, solicitous and typically deft. To its credit Michael’s doesn’t exude the sort of attitude that sometimes characterizes restaurants this popular with entertainment-world luminaries and the media elite.

But it also doesn’t muster anything close to the consistency that it should, given its lofty prices and respectable history.

The original Michael’s opened in Santa Monica in 1979 and established Mr. McCarty as a pioneer of a nascent style of American cooking. This Michael’s opened a decade later, and won plaudits — including two stars from Ruth Reichl in The New York Times in 1995 — for the quality of its vegetables, the profusion of them and the subtlety of some of its preparations.

Those were all hallmarks of California cuisine, a phrase that went away as the principles it connoted took permanent root and became less exceptional, as restaurants far and wide exalted the local and seasonal and turned away from elaborate saucing and gut-busting richness.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Michael’s still tries to out-roughage the rest of them, some of its dishes looking as if their route from kitchen to table took them through a deciduous forest.

In the context of New York restaurants today much of the food is actually on the embellished side. Some of it is too embellished, period. The cod came with a slightly intrusive saffron vanilla beurre blanc. The hamachi was awash in a mushroom beurre blanc and pumpkin seed oil.

Roasted trout fared better, flattered by all the fresh dill with it, and nicely cooked. Seafood plays a prominent role at Michael’s, taking up much of the menu’s real estate at lunch and dinner.

But my best experience here was breakfast. An omelet stuffed with sour cream and avocado was fluffy and luxurious. The tomatoes on top of a vegetable frittata were vivid and sweet. And chicken-apple sausages were lighter, sunnier alternatives to traditional pork links.

The restaurant seems to lose culinary steam as the day progresses. Lunch is better than dinner, inasmuch as it presents items like the very fine Cobb salad and decent Niçoise and hanger steak salads that aren’t on the nighttime menu.

But there’s uneven execution, and it’s sloppier still at dinner, a mix of some dishes that reflect high standards and others that bespeak carelessness.

One night I had a prime New York steak that was advertised as — and indeed tasted — dry-aged, unlike so many steaks billed that way.

But all that was distinctive about a rack of lamb on another night was the shockingly arid ricotta cannelloni beside it. Had the cannelloni languished under a heat lamp? Should a diner paying $45 for this entree forgive such a lapse?

And shouldn’t a diner paying $38 for sea scallops get more than two, situated at opposite ends of a long hillock of sautéed snow pea leaves?

Maybe that’s enough for a businessperson having a light lunch on a big expense account. For anyone else, it isn’t.

HOURS Breakfast from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. and lunch from noon to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Closed Sunday.

RESERVATIONS Call at least a few days ahead.

CREDIT CARDS All major cards.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Ramp available for four steps from entrance to dining rooms; restrooms not officially accessible.

WHAT THE STARS MEAN Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.